Sinister Descent
by Gambit's Nightmare
Summary: After being returned to his human form, Sinister is faced with reliving the important events of his life through nightmares and tries to mend bridges with Remy. Kind of AU.
1. Excuse Me, Miss

**Sinister Descent**

**Chapter 1 – Excuse me, Miss**

"You have crossed me for the last time, Sinister." Apocalypse growled as he pulled the syringe out of his leg and held Sinister up by the throat. Sinister grinned slightly and didn't so much as flinch as Apocalypse choked him. "It will not happen again."

Then, Sinister began to struggle against Apocalypse as intense pain overwhelmed him.

When Apocalypse released him, he fell to the floor of his lab, unconscious.

…………………………………………………………………………

_March 13, 1851_

"Excuse me, Miss, but would you like to share my umbrella?"

Nathaniel Essex walked closer to the soaking-wet woman walking in front of him and felt his heart skip when she turned to him and smiled.

"Thank you, sir." She replied, huddling with him under the umbrella. "I was not expecting the rain when I left today!"

Nathaniel smiled shyly. "This is London, Miss. There is no lack of dark, rainy nights like this.…Oh, please excuse my lack of manners. My name is Nathaniel. Nathaniel Essex."

"Rebecca Milbury." The woman replied as they came to an intersection. "I live about a mile that way," she said, pointing one way. "Do you live far?"

Nathaniel shrugged. "Not at all. May I accompany you to the door?"

In truth, he lived two miles in the opposite direction, but that seemed completely irrelevant at the time. "What a kind gentleman." Rebecca said. "May I ask what brought you out into this terrible weather tonight?"

Nathaniel smiled. "I am a physician, and delivered a baby earlier tonight. A lovely, healthy daughter to a friend of mine."

"A physician? You look quite young. You must be quite the scholar." Rebecca replied, with a slight grin. "My best wishes to your friend and their new baby."

"I'll certain pass them along." He replied. "And what brings a lovely lady such as yourself out tonight?"

"I was visiting a dear friend of mine, and simply lost track of how much time had passed." She said. "Oh! Dr. Essex, did you just say I was lovely?"

Essex froze. "Huh?" Then he looked down at the ground. "I suppose I did. My apologies for being so crass, Ms. Milbury." He said, embarrassed.

When he walked her to the doorsteps of Milbury Manor, he was greeted by Lord Milbury, one of the patrons at the asylum where Essex spent most of his days. "Dr. Essex! What a surprise! My thanks for bringing my daughter back in good condition. Please, come in!"

Lord Milbury smiled as he noticed the young doctor watch his daughter walk up the stairs with a shy smile. "Rebecca is beautiful, is she not?"

Essex, uncomfortable with having his attraction to Rebecca noticed, looked away and crossed his arms. "Indeed. She is quite lovely."

Lord Milbury lead Essex into his study, where they spent the better part of the hour discussing the asylum, politics, and medicine. Essex has always liked Lord Milbury; where many of the other patrons seemed to look to him to find fault with the manner in which he ran the asylum, Milbury was undeniably kinder and had come to Essex's defense in the past. There were quite a few 'experimental,' treatments that the other patrons often asked him to employ upon his patients, only to have Essex refuse them. Essex had very little life other than his job, and cared dearly for most of his patients. He had gone so far as to lock himself in the dark for a month just to see if it could possibly be a reasonable treatment for age-related mental deterioration. None of his patients were ever subjected to that and Essex had gained a reputation for being very much against most of the newest practices for the mentally ill.

"Dr. Essex, what are you feelings on the newest treatments mentioned in the journal?" Lord Milbury asked.

Essex put his tea down and frowned. "I fail to see the benefits of inflicting pain on my patients. Really, I do believe insanity is an illness, not a behavioral issue; I hardly think beating a person with pneumonia would serve any purpose, neither do I think these are effective treatments for the mentally ill." He looked up at the clock and stood. "While I have enjoyed speaking with you, it's nearly midnight and I must be on my way."

Lord Milbury lead him to the door. "Do come visit soon, Nathaniel." Then he leaned in and winked at Essex. "And feel free to come visit Rebecca as well."

Essex shyly smiled. "Oh, I hardly have the time for—"

"Nonsense!" Milbury said. "Please, I am positive Rebecca would love to see you again."

…………………………………………………………………………

Sinister jerked up from the ground. "Rebecca?"

It was the first time he had uttered her name in over a century.

He slowly stood up, and looked down at his hands, which were a healthy shade of peach, the tips slightly pink. His tongue felt along the edges of several flat incisors near the front of his mouth. His rough, impenetrable skin? Gone. Razor-sharp teeth? Gone. Mutation? Gone.

…………………………………………………………………………

Disclaimer: Don't own Marvel.

**Next Chapter: Sinister visits his wife's grave**

**Leave me comments!**

**Pwitty Pwease?**


	2. Rebecca

**Sinister Descent**

**Chapter 2 – Rebecca**

As Sinister wrestled with the rusty gate to what had once been the well-kept Milbury family cemetery, he was vaguely aware that he had gone completely insane. After finally kicking the gate open, he wandered through the cemetery, remembering the night he had entered it and smashed each and every tombstone, except one, which he barely had the heart to maim. He knew what it was supposed to say.

Rebecca Milbury Essex

January 3, 1832 – November 9, 1859

A century and a half had made the stone unreadable and worn, and someone had taken the time to scratch 'Essex' off of it completely. He sat down in front of the stone and pulled absent-mindedly at the grass as he thought for a moment.

……………………………………………………………….

_December 23, 1851_

He finished a few things at the asylum and walked to Milbury Manor, trying with no real success to tame the butterflies in his stomach. He had a single red rose in one hand.

"Nathaniel, my boy! Come in! Come in!" Lord Milbury greeted him at the door and smiled. "Are you ready?" Milbury couldn't have been more pleased when Essex asked for his daughter's hand in marriage. He was a young, and undeniably brilliant young doctor, and they were quite obviously in love, despite Nathaniel's apparent lack of charming capabilities. He was clumsy, shy, and, at times, had been known to lose himself in scientific discussion in poor attempts to be romantic.

Essex felt the ring box in his pocket and inhaled sharply. "I think so."

"Good! I will go get my daughter." Milbury said, leading Nathaniel into the garden.

Nathaniel nervously paced across the grass until Rebecca snuck up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder, causing him to jump a foot or so in the air. "Why Nathaniel, you are all nerves today!" She said, smiling.

Laughing, Essex turned to her and gave her the rose. "Rebecca, you look beautiful, as always." He said, kneeling. "You know, humans are one of only a few mammals that mates for life. And…" He sighed. "Oh hell! Can I start over?" Nathaniel kicked himself for only having rehearsed the moment a hundred or so times.

Rebecca giggled and ruffled his hair. "Of course, Nathan. You should be thankful that I do not love you for your suave way with words."

Nathaniel bit his lip, then pulled out the ring box. "Rebecca Milbury, will you be my wife?"

……………………………………………………………….

Sinister traced the worn letters of the stone as he finally spoke. "Rebecca, I do not believe in God. I do not believe in heaven, or hell, or in any form of life after this one. You are not in a better place, or any place, for that matter. You are simply dead, your stunning beauty reduced by this time to dry bones and brittle hair, your personality lost forever. Regardless of my actions, the end result would be this – dust and bones, the cost of mortality."

"'Till Death do Us Part?" He laughed. "Sometimes, what little life a person has is not enough. You died, you left me, and now, I am torn by regret that I played a hand in it at all. Maybe you won, after all, Rebecca." He sighed and looked angrily at the still stone. "I almost expected you to say something. Something moralistic. And then, I remembered that you're as dead as I will be when this husk of a body withers, your morals having taken you to an early, miserable grave. Tell me, was death the freedom you hoped for? Were you reunited with our dead son?" Essex laughed cruelly. "Or were you shocked and disillusioned as you simply descended into the nothingness that is death? The void our son fell into? He was four, Rebecca. Those of us who refuse to rely on the archaic crutch of religion might go mad at the thought that something so tiny and fragile was surrendered to something so awful and dark at such a young age."

………………………………………………………………

_June 5 and 6, 1953_

"Good morning." Nathaniel said as Rebecca's eyes slowly opened. "How are my two favorite people this fine morning?"

Rebecca smiled and snuggled closer to him. "Quite well, husband." Nathan kissed his wife and rubbed her stomach. "You are such a loving husband. Every woman I know envies me dearly. Your awkward romantics, dedication, playful disposition…I really am spoiled. And so very blessed."

Essex stretched and propped his head up. "I have no idea what you are talking about. I simply married up into a well-respected family. You just happened to be my…Ow! What?" He grinned evilly. "You know I love you, Rebecca. Now, when is my son going to grow tired of your body? I know as well as any that it is a very nice place to be inside of, but enough is enough!"

"Nathaniel Essex!" She said, "What an inappropriate comment. Besides, son? Don't be silly. It is a girl. Mother's instincts." Rebecca replied.

"No such thing, my dear." He said. "I am a doctor, I have delivered quite a few female 'first sons' to know that you have no clue as to what our child is like. Silly woman." He got out of bed and began to dress.

After telling Rebecca goodbye, he walked to the asylum and found a package on his desk. After ripping open the package, he found a book and a collections of papers relating to Charles Darwin, a completely controversial figure whom Essex hadn't taken a liking to at all. Joshua Harper, the other doctor that worked with him, soon entered his office. "What are your feelings on this Darwin character?"

Essex tossed the book aside. "Incredibly far-fetched and immoral. How can a person denounce the existence of God? He is everywhere, and in everything. I find the presumption to be utterly preposterous."

Joshua nodded. "Indeed. Such nonsense. The man has the nerve to defy God himself."

Less than twelve hours later Nathan found himself nervously pacing the hallway after his wife went into labor. He knocked and Joshua opened the door. "Is she alright?"

"Nathaniel, you healthy wife is having a baby. Don't be so anxious." He said, smirking. "You want to be beside her, do you not?"

He nodded and Joshua opened the door. Nathaniel knelt beside Rebecca throughout the remainder of the birth. Despite having witnessed quite a few births as a doctor, he was startled and quite frightened to see his own wife suffer. He had seen more than one woman die from complications. His relief when the baby was finally born was halted sharply when he saw the newborn. Yes, he was a boy as Nathan had hoped for. And yes, Rebecca was going to be fine.

But that baby wasn't.

………………………………………………………………

Sinister glared at the pile of rubble beside his wife's tombstone. "You never had a chance." He picked up a chunk of the tombstone and fiddled with it. "Children cannot survive with malformed spines, deformed rib cages, blood disorders, and God knows how many things I could not diagnose at the time. My greatest failure as a man and a doctor was on the person I wanted to save most. I am sure that if you anything more than decomposed organic matter, you would see the irony in that."

He stood up and dusted his pants off. As he turned, he looked back and flinched. "And that last thing I said to you? I didn't mean it."

………………………………………………………………

**Next Chapter: Remy!**

Comments? Pwitty pwease?

Author's notes: Yes, even with his humanity, Sinister is a raving lunatic. I actually recently acquired The Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix 1-4, where this story is laid out, and he was already really nutty when he stumbled upon Apocalypse. The first few chapters are going to have a lot of flashback material in them, and then taper off as the Remy subplot becomes more dominant. Enjoy.

You guys know I get the Sinister Itch. He's in MOST of my stories. He's just so damn interesting!

utsuri – Neato? Yay! Glad you liked.  
Doza – I totally understand WHY Sinister chose to do the things he did back then. I can't even imagine how awful it would be to have a son that was born with defects like that. And, despite being one of the medical geniuses of his time, be completely unable to help him. Helplessness is something you NEVER see attached to Essex after his conversion.  
BlkDiamond – No kitties in this one. But Remy is elusive, like a cat/human hybrid. Just pretend he's a kitty.  
WolvieFanSpell – I adore Sinister. I love how he's developed in such a way that I can easily sympathize and detest him all at once.  
BJ2 – I confess to being a Sinister worshipper. He's brilliant, and not quite evil, just totally driven by his goals. I read a fic that suggest Sinister was the most dangerous villain because he could simply tesseract a huge bomb over to the X-Men, etc., and take over the world nearly unchecked. IF that was his goal.  
Kyotsuke – thank you for reviewing, good luck with your new story.


	3. Sons

**Sinister Descent**

**Chapter 3 – Remy**

Remy Lebeau strolled down the hall to his room, sorting through the junk mail on his bed, stopping at a mysterious yellow envelope. Smiling, he charged the envelope and watched it turn to ash, the contents falling to the bed where they laid.

There on the bed laid a photo of a young boy with red-on-black eyes, laying in bed he had no memory of, his arms around a teddy bear he never had. He picked it up and looked at it, the child looked so much like him, same eyes, same everything. Someone had written "Do you want to know?" across the bottom with black permanent marker. After flipping the photo over, he saw a time and location written on the back.

…………………………………………………………………………

_June 3, 1854_

"He is going to die is he not?" Rebecca Essex whispered in the darkness of their bedroom.

Nathaniel Essex peered over the covers and looked into his wife's eyes. "Yes." He didn't want to talk about it, as much as they needed to. Their son was his joy, even being hurt, even being sick. This week, he'd watched the child try in vain to walk. The sting of watching to boy fall down over and over again was fresh in his heart, Adam refused to believe he couldn't do it. So Nathaniel watched him stand and fall, so many times. He rushed to Adam's side and held him while he cried, and then tried again.

"Isn't there anything we can do?" Rebecca asked her husband, desperately.

This is the thing that haunted him most; he could dedicate his life to medicine, help everyone else, but he was watching his own son die a painful, horrible death. He felt his wife rest against him and he rolled over. "No." He said sharply as he closed his eyes and his heart to the woman he loved.

It was the next day at the Asylum that Essex's life took a dramatic turn.

"Hello, Mr. Stamp." Essex said coldly, tired and upset from the previous night. "It says..." He froze when he saw the boys hands, burning through the chair in front of his desk. "My God." Rushing to the boy's side, Essex threw the boys arms off, expecting to see extensive burning. Instead, he was greeted with the healthy, pink fingers all small children have.

After several moments of staring, the Stamps ran out, frightened by Essex's reaction. Everything Essex knew about medicine said that what he had just seen was impossible, a lie, a trick, a sham. When he finally managed to swallow what he'd witnessed, he glanced over the papers in front of him. They had the same affliction, but the boy's was stronger.

He opened the drawer and pulled out Charles Darwin's book, which only hours ago had seemed like complete madness.

When he came home that night, his son was in bed, covered in bruises and screaming. Essex carried Adam gently in his arms and rubbing his ugly, deformed back until the boy was sound asleep. He leaned down and kissed the boy's hair, whispering softly.

"Father found a way, Adam."

The next day, Essex went to work like any other day, but from that day forward, he vowed to find out what made Oscar and Daniel better, more capable creatures. It was the only chance Adam had to survive, which made his scientific goals more than just science. He was fighting so he could watch his son grow into a man someday.

The Stamps, who were initially happy Dr. Essex didn't call them freaks, were soon frightened by the unmistakably experimental nature of his treatments. Not that they were 'treatments' to cure the Stamps at all; Essex had devoting hours a day to simply understanding their bizarre powers.

One night, shortly after he began his research into the Stamps, a man stepped out of the shadows of a dark alley. "I heard you are interested in demons."

Essex looked down at the man. "What I am interested in is the next step in human advancement."

As Essex walked away, the man cleared his throat. "I know a girl who can pick up things with her mind." The doctor stopped and looked at the man. "Another little boy who can tell what people are feeling." Essex stepped closer. "And, the one you might be most interested in – a boy that heals nearly instantly. Maybe that would make your son die a little more slowly." The man sneered and was soon thrown up against the wall by Essex.

"Who are you?" Essex growled at him.

"Name is Cootie. Your connection to the cursed." The man replied as Essex let go of him. "I call 'em my Marauders."

"Show me." Essex ordered.

"Right this way, Sir." Cootie replied, gesturing to the shadowy entrance to the ancient tunnels.

Nathaniel Essex stepped into the darkness, emerging a changed, driven man hours later.

………………………………………………………………………

Remy made it to the address on the back of the photo hours before the meeting was supposed to begin. Carefully sneaking into the house, he looked around curiously. There was something so familiar about it...and something so very strange.

"Hello, Remy." Essex said, looking out the window. "You are not going to like what you hear. Your parentage, my past, the things you don't remember...are you sure you want to know?"

Remy leaned against the doorway and held the picture in his hand. "Oui." He said. Remy wasn't sure why Essex was being benevolent, but his empathy, unobstructed by the psionic shield Sinsiter had only days before, told him Essex was genuine. He'd heard the rumors about Essex, but had dismissed them as yet another trick from the pallid mutate."Remy heard y'been bad and lost all y'powers."

Essex shrugged and grinned.

Remy's face went blank. Remy would know that smirk anywhere, it was his. And at that moment he knew, he was the son of Sinister. "Mon Dieu..." He whispered. He examined Essex, who, in human form, looked so much like him. The same chiseled face, jaw, chin. "Are you..." His voice rasped.

Essex looked down and nodded his head.

…………………………………………………………………………

_January 3, 1857_

"Father! Father! Come watch me!"

Essex put his book down and smiled as he walked across the hall to the sound of his son's voice.

"Watch!" Adam said again as Nathaniel came around the corner and froze.

"Adam, no!" He yelled, the boy standing on the top of the banister of their stairs. "Come down from there, give me your hand." Essex said as he raced up the stairs and held out a hand to to boy. The boy leaned over to take his hand, losing his balance. "NO!"

Adam fell forward, and his rage cage shattering on the stair railing, his limp body fell off the rail and landed in Essex's arms. Essex gasped as he ran a hand over the boy's chest. The boy's eyes fluttered open as blood began to drip from his mouth, he tried to breathe, but Adam's lungs were punctured.

Essex held the boy and wiped the tears from his son's eyes. "So weak." He murmured coldly as the boy's eyes closed and his heart stopped beating. "No!" He yelled as he felt the boy die. "No, not this, anything but this!" Essex began to sob uncontrollably, staring at the ceiling as he cried. "Oh God, take me instead, take me instead!"

…………………………………………………………………………

**I return! Pregnant with twins girls! And married! And in a new house!**


End file.
